


It's Been One Week

by ishie



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: 1000-5000 Words, 2009, Alternate Universe, F/M, One Shot, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:55:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Leonid camping trip was a bust. The next week doesn't get much better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Been One Week

**Author's Note:**

> This was intended to be a quick and dirty little comedy piece so of course it went totally off the rails. Based on fanspec &amp; pre-airing spoilers for 3x08 _The Adhesive Duck Deficiency_.
> 
> Huge thanks to [Juniperlane](http://juniperlane.livejournal.com/) for the fast and excellent beta, [Mrsvc](http://mrsvc.livejournal.com/) for the Snow Patrol suggestion (see one of the vids Leonard's watching [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTwgqIQlqJY)), and the Twitter crowd for a crucial poll response. ♥

Late Sunday night, Raj dropped him off in front of the building and Leonard stumbled up the stairs, stiff and sore and sunburned on every visible inch of skin. He wanted to curl up in bed (or better yet: to curl up in Penny's) and sleep for days.

Instead, he found himself nervously hovering around her, worried about the injury she kept downplaying - and the horse-sized painkillers she kept gobbling down - and frustrated that she wouldn't explain what had happened beyond a terse "I slipped and dislocated my shoulder. I'm _fine_." She kicked him out after half an hour, but she did it so nicely that he didn't realize he was being kicked out until the door shut in his face.

The atmosphere in his own apartment wasn't much better. Sheldon greeted him with a distracted "I suppose this means none of you were mauled by a bear," and then disappeared into the bathroom for over an hour.

\---

On Monday, he overslept by so much that he didn't have time to do more than jump under the shower long enough to get wet, then jump right back out again. As he rushed around trying to find something clean to wear, Sheldon was mercifully silent and didn't so much as sigh at his watch.

Leonard didn't press his luck by asking why.

When they got home that evening, he knocked on Penny's door. When she didn't answer, he assumed she had passed out in a codeine coma and wished he could do the same.

Sheldon made himself scarce again, and as Leonard passed his closed door on his way to bed, he thought he heard the whir of the backup printer.

\---

By Tuesday, Sheldon had apparently decided to unilaterally ban all round or spherical fruits, vegetables, and baked goods from the apartment, except for any cookie deliveries that might come from his mom or meemaw.

Leonard found an itemized list of the contraband items on his desk after dinner. Seventeen pages, complete with mouth-watering photos that seemed uncomfortably obscene, like he'd stumbled across actual food porn featuring everything from apples to the _Ziziphus zizyphus_, whatever the hell that was.

"What the hell, we can't even have bagels now?" he asked.

From behind him, Raj called, "What about mangoes?"

Sheldon's jaw set and he shook his head sharply. "Definitely not, and not while I'm still alive."

Without any further explanation, he marched down the hallway to the bathroom. No one said anything until they heard the shower come on.

"Why the hell is he taking a shower now? Isn't he going to watch the new episode of _V_ with us?"

"He said he would rather publish our latest findings with me as the lead author than continue to watch a substandard remake of the classic miniseries. And then he made me drive him twenty miles out of the way to buy new dry-erase markers," Raj told Howard.

"The kind with the barrel that doesn't roll?" At Raj's nod, Howard shrugged. "It is a better design."

Leonard tossed the stapled sheaf of papers on the coffee table and picked up the remote. "Whatever. Let's see if anyone peels off their face tonight."

Penny didn't say anything. Instead she scratched her arm inside its sling and stared off into space until Raj and Howard got up to leave. She followed not long after, affecting a jaw-cracking yawn that wouldn't have fooled a blind man.

As he was falling asleep, Leonard thought he heard a muffled moaning sound from the wall separating his room from Sheldon's. He pulled his pillow over his head and squeezed his eyes shut, willing sleep to leap up to claim him.

\---

Wednesdays were Sheldon's day to work from home, part of some ridiculous green initiative the university had started. Why Sheldon couldn't just sit in a dark office and think at the walls, Leonard didn't know, nor did he really care. Wednesdays meant listening to the light rock station as loud as it would go on his drive to and from and to and from work.

Unfortunately, they also meant that he had to play caterer, hence the increase in _to_ing and _fro_ing. He came home at lunchtime with the customary bag of sandwiches from the Sheldon-approved deli a block off campus. The kid behind the counter hadn't batted an eye at the revised order, but he thought he'd heard cursing from the kitchen as the doors swung closed.

"Lunch!" he called, dropping the bag on the counter. He crossed over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of juice.

A door opened and Sheldon's footsteps echoed down the hall. He was rifling through the bag before Leonard had finished pouring. His hair was damp and his cheeks flushed.

"Were you in the shower again?"

"No."

"Then why is your hair all-"

"I was in my room, Leonard," Sheldon snapped. "I wasn't aware that you wanted to know about any deviations in my routine but I can print out a report if you want details."

"Uh," was all Leonard managed to say before Sheldon changed the subject.

"Did you tell them to substitute sliced bread for the roll?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And to leave off the tomato?"

"Seriously, what's your deal? You're showering twice as often, you look like you're _sweating_ and what is this thing with round vegetables, Sheldon? You won't even eat a sliced tomato? This is even crazier than normal."

Sheldon's left eye started to twitch.

Leonard sighed. "You're really going to do that every time I don't specifically identify a tomato as a fruit?"

There was a long pause as the twitch grew more pronounced and Sheldon continued to stare at his sandwich.

"Yes," he said finally. "I am." He retreated to his room once more, leaving Leonard to stare after him wondering what the hell was going on.

Sheldon didn't come out again before he left to go back to work. When Leonard got home that night, he knocked on Penny's door, just as soon as he'd dropped his bag on his desk chair. She looked tired as she let him in.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, noticing that she'd discarded the sling but still cradled her arm tight against her body.

"This freaking sucks!" she whined. "I had to have a busboy follow me around all day because I can't even carry a frigging _drink_ across the room. Do you know how much I had to tip him out? I'm never going to pay this stupid hospital bill."

"If you need money, I can-"

She held up her uninjured arm to cut him off. "Don't even go there with me right now, Leonard."

It wasn't the most awkward evening they'd ever spent together - he still couldn't look at a bottle of tequila or a picture of his mother without cringing - but it was up there. She winced every time she moved, and she moved a lot: fidgeting all through whatever movie she'd popped in the DVD player, leaning away when he tried to cuddle up to her, popping up from the couch and bustling around the kitchen when he asked if there was anything he could do to take her mind off things. When she clicked off the television and started yawning, he fought down the urge to wheedle her into letting him spend the night and got up to leave instead.

"Do you need any help getting ready for bed?"

"No!" She held the door open for him, eyes wide. "Why would I need help?!"

"Um, because of your shoul-"

"Night!" she trilled, and shut the door in his face.

"-der?"

\---

On Thursday, Sheldon spent most of their lunch break sitting at the table in the cafeteria without responding to anyone. He stared at the palm of his hand for so long that even Howard started to get worried. When they tried to question him, he snapped at them and practically stormed out.

As they walked back to their building, Leonard asked, "Has he been acting this weird while you're working?"

"How would I know?"

"Because you sit in the same room with him all day long, Raj."

"Yeah, but it's _Sheldon_. That's like asking me if I've ever noticed that Howard wears too much Brut."

"Okay, point."

"Hey!"

"People flee from the toxic cloud that surrounds you."

Howard tried to stick out his narrow chest. "Bernadette likes it."

No one had anything to say to that and they walked in silence past the life sciences building. They crowded to one side of the sidewalk to let a clump of students pass. When they were gone, Raj said, "If this ends up in a _kal-if-fee_, can I be T'Pau?"

"What?" Leonard spluttered. "Why would he challenge me to a fight to the death?"

Raj shrugged. "With the late-night moaning and the bitching and all the alone time you were telling us about... Something's going on with him."

"Well, it's not _that_. And anyway, what would he have to challenge me over?" As soon as he said it, Leonard's stomach twisted. Something _had_ happened while he was out of town over the weekend, something that neither Penny or Sheldon were talking about. He had been trying not to think about it, but the harder he tried not to, the more horrible scenarios crowded into his head. "He's probably just frustrated by his research or something."

"I guess he has been pretty easily distracted this week. He didn't even notice when I accidentally reversed the polarity of the neutron flow this morning."

As they filed through the door of their building, Howard nudged Raj and asked, "You know T'Pau's a woman, right?"

"Yeah, and she kicks _ass_," Raj retorted. "You're so sexist. And come on, have you seen the size of her ceremonial headdress?"

\---

On Friday, as they were driving to work, Leonard kept up a steady rant about Penny refusing to let him help her. Getting dressed for work had to be torture and he knew she probably wasn't eating anything approaching real food. He'd spent more time talking to her door than to her face and he was starting to get a little pissy about it. More than a little pissy, if he was honest with himself.

If his diatribe had an ulterior motive, like, say, goading Sheldon into saying something unguarded, he didn't dwell on it.

Sheldon made him stop less than two blocks from their apartment.

"Oh, come on! We're not fighting! I just think it's ridiculous that my girlfriend doesn't even want my help when she's hurt."

Sheldon swung his legs out of the car. "I understand that, as neither my hearing nor my cognitive functions are impaired. I would simply rather walk today."

He set off down the block at a near-gallop. Leonard sat and watched for a minute, struck by a sudden desire to go to the zoo to watch the baby giraffes run around their enclosure.

"Great, now I'm just as crazy as they are," he muttered as he pulled back into traffic.

\---

On Saturday morning, Leonard woke up to the sound of someone doing a really terrible job of yelling and trying to sound like they weren't. He stumbled down the hallway, tying the belt of his robe. He shoved his glasses on and Penny and Sheldon came into focus on the other side of the kitchen counter.

Penny noticed him first and shot a terrible thin-lipped smile at Sheldon. "You _will_ talk about to me about this later," she bit out.

Sheldon looked startled, then saw Leonard standing by the fridge. "I don't think I will," he said, his tone firm.

She blanched, her lips pressed together so tightly that they were starting to go white at the seam of her mouth.

"What the hell is going on with you two?" His voice came out more uncertain than he'd been aiming for so Leonard crossed his arms and glared at them, hoping to make up for it.

"Nothing with which you need to concern yourself," Sheldon said at the same time that Penny blurted, "Your roommate is an _asshole_."

She turned and stomped to the door, whirling back at the last minute to shoot another glare at Sheldon. "Brace yourself, _Moonpie_, because we _are_ going to talk about this."

The door slammed behind her, so loud that Leonard almost missed Sheldon's mumbled, "The needs of the many...."

He brushed off Leonard's increasingly angry questions and tucked a composition book and his laptop under his arm, then stalked back to his room and slammed the door. Rather, he shut it with a slightly louder click than normal, which for Sheldon was akin to blasting it off the hinges.

Leonard hesitated in the living room for a minute or two, trying to figure out which of them was the weaker link. With a sigh, he tightened the belt on his robe again and let himself out into the hallway. Penny swung the door open before he'd finished knocking and he stumbled forward over the threshold.

"I don't want to talk about it, Leonard."

He crossed his arms again. "Well, that's too bad, because I _do_. What's going on? Why are you so pissed at Sheldon? And what's the deal with him? He's spent more time in his room this week than he did when we got back from the Arctic."

Penny's fierce expression melted into something sad and distant. Her good shoulder sagged and she sank down onto the couch.

"We're friends, aren't we, Leonard?"

"What?" He crossed quickly to sit beside her, his stomach diving down to somewhere around his knees. "Of course we are!" he tried to reassure her. "I mean, we're dating, aren't we?"

His laugh was quick and forced, maybe tinged with a little bit of panic. _Friends_ wasn't a good word to hear coming out of your girlfriend; he knew that much at least.

She gave him a half-smile and shook her head. "No, I mean, if we weren't, we'd still be friends, right? That's pretty much us in a nutshell: friends with benefits."

"I wouldn't put it that way," he tried to protest but she wasn't listening.

"Anyway, not the point." She squeezed his hand. "Sweetie, thank you for being worried about me but this is between me and Sheldon. We'll work it out. Even if I have to hogtie him to do it."

"You're seriously not even going to talk to me about it?" he asked, his voice rising. He could feel his face heating as he let himself get angry. He jerked his hand away from hers, barely noticing how her expression darkened.

"No, I'm _not_. I just told you, it's none of your business. It's between _me_ and _Sheldon_. Notice how you're not in that sentence at all?"

"You're _my girlfriend_. The least you could do is tell me what the hell is going on with you two."

"No, the least I can do is let you get up and walk out of here before I kick your ass," she growled.

"Oh, nice. That's really mature."

"Like you should talk! God, I thought you were different but you're just like every other guy I've dated. I'm your girlfriend, not your property, and I don't have to tell you jack." She got to her feet and stalked over to jerk the door open. "Why don't you go home and beat your chest some more?"

"Maybe I will," Leonard said, walking out with as much dignity as he could muster and painfully aware that as far as comebacks went, that was about the lamest thing he could have said.

"Great," she shouted. The door slammed behind him, so loud that his ears rang for twenty minutes afterward.

He spent most of the rest of the day throwing things around in his room under the guise of cleaning. Howard and Raj wandered in around lunchtime and quickly backed out again, tossing excuses over their shoulders as they went. His anger deflated quickly after that, and he sat on his bed with his laptop and logged in to YouTube.

Halfway through the ninth repitition of _Make This Go On Forever_, Sheldon triple-knock-and-Leonard-ed on the open door.

"It's ten past five," he announced with no preamble. "Are you going to pick up dinner or should I begin preparations for Contingency Plan 11-A?"

Leonard turned up the sound on his laptop. "I don't care."

"Contingency Plan 11-A is soy cheese lasagna."

"I said, I don't care."

"Neither of us like soy cheese but it's the only meal for which we currently have all the ingredients."

"Fine."

Sheldon shuffled his feet and didn't leave. With a sigh, Leonard paused the video and set his laptop down on the comforter.

"Is that _The X-Files_? I don't recall this song appearing in any episodes."

"It's not. It's a fanvi- What do you want, Sheldon?"

"From your selection of songs for the past three hours, I would hypothesize that you and Penny have at last reached the end of your entanglement."

Leonard scowled. "Well, we haven't. We're just- I don't want to talk about it, especially not with you."

"Understandably," Sheldon said with a nod. "I had anticipated that we would have reached this point much sooner, but I seem to have underestimated Penny's ability to maintain confidences." He turned and disappeared down the hall before Leonard had time to process his words.

"Wait!" he called, scrambling off the bed and chasing after him. "What confidences?"

In the kitchen, Sheldon froze, his hand curling into a fist on the cabinet pull. "What confidences?" he parroted without turning.

"The ones you just mentioned! Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about."

"I apologize. Clearly I misspoke."

"Don't give me that crap. I want to know what you two are keeping secret."

Sheldon's shoulders dropped and he pulled several bowls out of the cabinet and stacked them on the counter. "It's not my place to say. Please don't make me break my word to Penny."

"I've had enough of this," Leonard muttered. He went over and scooped his keys out of the bowl. "Come on, we're going down to the Cheesecake Factory to settle this right now."

"I don't think interrupting Penny's shift-"

"Now!"

"Well, you don't have to yell," Sheldon admonished him.

"Yes, actually, I think I do."

The ride across town was every bit as silent and awkward as the rest of the week had been. By the time they pulled into the crowded parking lot, Leonard's hands ached from gripping the steering wheel. He put the car in park and fumbled with his seatbelt. Sheldon was out of the car like a shot, and Leonard was out of breath by the time he caught up to him in the tiny lobby of the restaurant.

Penny was standing at the hostess' stand, the dark blue of her sling jarring against the bright yellow and white of her uniform shirt. "Guys, what's-"

"I didn't break the Fidelius Charm intentionally!" Sheldon blurted, looking panicked.

Her eyes narrowed as she glared at him, then at Leonard. "Outside," she said, dropping the menus in her hand onto the stand. When they didn't move fast enough to suit her, she came around the front of it and gave Sheldon a shove on his lower back. "Move it."

"There's no need to get physical," Sheldon began.

"Little late for that now, sweetie," she cooed, her voice sickly sweet.

Leonard's heart skipped a beat and he tried not to throw up on his shoes. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," he said weakly. "We shouldn't have come here while you're trying to work."

Penny shouldered the door open and threw a fake smile at the crowd of pager-carrying people waiting for tables. "Yeah, well, you did," she said from behind clenched teeth, "so let's do this."

She led them around the side of the building, into a little space between two well-trimmed bushes. "All right, talk," she said to Leonard, who stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at the ground. "What did he tell you?"

"I didn't tell him anything!" Sheldon squawked. "I may have confirmed his suspicions about our behavior this week but I certainly didn't betray our agreement."

When Penny didn't respond, Leonard looked up to find the two of them looking at each other as if they were having their own private conversation over whatever telepathic link they'd apparently developed. Bitterness clawed at him.

"Will one of you just freaking tell me what's going on?"

"I kissed him, okay?" Penny shouted. "I fell in the shower and he helped me get dressed-"

"With my eyes closed, I might add," Sheldon interrupted.

"-to go to the emergency room and he copped a feel and I got whacked out on pain meds and _I. kissed. him._ Are you happy now?"

Saying _No_ was Leonard's first instinct but he couldn't push the words past where his heart was lodged in his throat.

"Why would he be happy?"

"Not the time, Sheldon."

Something about the way she said it to him, not snippy or angry or irritated but indulgent and soft, snapped something inside Leonard. "You let him see you naked?"

"Excuse me, I just said I had my eyes closed," Sheldon corrected.

Leonard ignored him. "You let him _touch you_? _Naked_?"

Penny practically snarled, "Did you miss the part where I had _dislocated my shoulder_?"

Leonard's blood pressure skyrocketed so fast it felt like the top of his head had blown off. "You kissed him! And this whole week you've made _me_ feel like an asshole for trying to find out what was wrong? What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What the hell is wrong with _you_?!" she yelled back. "This is why I didn't want to tell you, because you'd blow it all out of proportion just like you do with everything else!"

"Out of proportion?" he sputtered. "_You let my roommate get to second base faster than I did_."

She stepped away from him, her eyes cold and flat. "I can't believe you just said that."

He stomped down on the flicker of regret that sparked inside him. "Well, that's what it boils down to, doesn't it? To be with me, you need alcohol and a three month sabbatical but for Sheldon, apparently all it takes is him being in the same room."

"Don't be an idiot."

"I'm pretty sure _I'm_ not the idiot here."

Penny goggled at him and curled her hand into a fist. "Fine, that's the way you want to play it? We're done, Leonard."

She walked away, back to the front of the building, every line of her body tight with anger. He waited until she was just about to turn the corner and shouted, "He still sleeps with a nightlight, you know!" Why that particular parting shot flew out of his mouth, he never would understand, but at the time it struck him as exactly the right thing to say.

"At least he doesn't pretend to be something he's not," she called back, almost too quietly for him to hear.

Behind him, Sheldon snorted. "She has a point there."

Leonard didn't turn around. "Find another ride home, Sheldon."

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"I don't know," Leonard yelled. "Why don't you steal someone else's girlfriend and make her drive you?"

Sheldon called after him, "I don't have time for that! _Total Recall_ starts in 45 minutes. I'll miss the first dream sequence!"

\---

On Sunday morning, Leonard loitered in the living room until he heard Penny's door open. He ran to his own door and quickly stepped out into the hallway. She was dressed in a sloppy pair of sweats, an overstuffed laundry bag slung over her good shoulder like a giant purse.

"Do you want any help?" he asked.

"Not from you, thanks." She kept marching toward the stairs.

As she started down, he pulled his door closed and took a step toward her. "I'm sorry about last night," he said.

Penny shook her head, still not facing him. "You're not sorry, Leonard, you just don't want us to be over."

She was right, he didn't. He especially didn't want to think about the reason they were. It was one thing to get dumped by Penny; if he was honest with himself, he could admit that he'd been expecting it since the moment they met. But it was another thing altogether to get dumped by Penny for _Sheldon_.

"You're really picking him over me?" he asked, his voice so low he hoped she hadn't heard it at all.

Her laundry bag hit the landing with a thump and she turned to look back up at him. "I'm not _picking_ him. I'm just not picking you."

He tried to hide his wince and she waved her hand around in the air.

"I don't know what's going to happen. I really don't. And I'm sorry that you're hurt by this but ... we just don't work, Leonard. _I_ don't work like this, not with you being suspicious and jealous of everything I do."

Leonard opened his mouth to protest, the same sick, angry feeling already rushing up into his chest.

"I know I screwed up, and believe me, I don't get it either. Sheldon makes about as much sense to me as your boards do. But the cat's dead for us, Leonard. I think it has been this whole time. We just didn't want to open the box."

He wanted to argue but couldn't find the right words. Instead, he watched as she kicked her laundry bag down the next flight of stairs.

"Huh, that's a whole lot easier," she said before turning a sad smile up at him. "We'll be okay, Leonard. Eventually."

He watched her disappear around the corner. "I hope so," he said to the empty hallway.

**Author's Note:**

> Started: 12 November 2009  
> Finished: 15 November 2009


End file.
